Potty Training Part 3

Jackson has had the "front end" of potty training down for a while. He stayed dry for two weeks straight to earn Rocket from Little Einsteins, which he was so excited about, and continues to remind us, "I EARNED that!" This is the cute little sticker chart I made for him with the picture of Rocket.

Anyway, despite our "front end" success, the "back end" part continued to give him trouble. We bribed him, cajoled him, reasoned with him (which involved way too much frank discussion of bodily functions for anyone's comfort), and even threatened him, but nothing seemed to do any good. It wasn't until a couple of weeks ago that it dawned on me that he didn't just not want to poop on the potty - he didn't want to poop AT ALL - anywhere or at any time. It's ironic because I work with stool withholders all the time at work, but it never crossed my mind that this could be Jackson's problem. Anyway, after a little trial and error and TLC (AKA regular doses of prune juice), he finally started pooping on the potty! After months of trying to get him to do this, we had pretty much promised him a pony and a BMW for pooping on the potty, so he started cashing in on all his promised rewards at a rapid rate. Ice cream? Sure! A big mylar balloon? Here you go!

So on Thursday we picked him up at school and he came running up to us announcing, "I poo poo on the potty! I get ice cream! I get ice cream now!" We tried to shush him so his teachers wouldn't figure out that we parent through bribery, and shuttled him home. He had been settled into his seat at the table with a big bowl of rainbow sherbet for only a few minutes, when his eyes fell on a giant orange pumpkin sitting on the counter and filled with awesome Halloween candy (no cheapies around here!). He immediately demanded, "I want candy! I want that candy! I want that candy now!" "Well honey," I said sweetly, "Maybe the next time you poo poo on the potty, you can earn a special piece of candy from the pumpkin!" I then sat back quietly and marvelled at my brilliant parenting. He sat back quietly too. Then he announced suddenly, "I have go poo poo! I have go poo poo on the potty!" and ran off to the bathroom. About 10 minutes later, Matt walked in the front door to discover his son sitting at the kitchen table eating a bowl of ice cream and munching on a "fun size" bag of M&Ms (which hold way more candy then you would ever think). The truth is, however, that we were both SO EXCITED to be done with diapers that we almost didn't care when he didn't eat his dinner that night. Yay for no more diapers!

Update: My First Picture Schedule

I've had a few requests asking for an update on our Picture Schedule. The next couple of days after the original post were still rough. The first step was to get Jackson to understand that when he found the picture of Dora at the end of his schedule, he would get a Special Treat. After two or three days of receiving Special Treats, we explained to him that if we had to put him in time-out during the Picture Schedule, he would not get a Special Treat. After that, it was pretty much smooth sailing. During days 3-5, we had to tell him a few times, "you can either put your shirt on, or go to time-out. Remember, if you go to time-out during your pictures, no special treat."

Since day 5, he's been doing awesome. He pulls his pictures off himself and tells me what we are doing next. After about a week and half, he started waking up in the morning and spontaneously asking to use the pictures. Toddlers love to have a sense of control, and the picture schedule has given this to him.

This intervention might sound like a lot of work, but if you have enough technical skills to follow a blog, you can definitely pull this off with very little effort. Basically, you grab your digital camera and run around the house taking pictures. Then you upload them to the computer and print them on photo paper using the "wallet sized" photo setting (8 print on a page using this setting, so you really don't have to waste a ton of paper). You could laminate them if you are really motivated, but I find the photo paper is fairly sturdy, and you can always print another one if you need to. Then you go to Wal-mart in the sewing section and grab a roll of plain old velcro (no super duper sticking stuff - it should be fairly easy for little hands to take apart). Cut half the velcro into little squares and stick it to the back of the pictures, and put a strip of the other half on a piece of cardboard. Viola - picture schedule in ten minutes or less. And let me tell you, it is ten minutes well spent. The time for our morning routine has dropped to less than ten minutes, and we are all much happier in the mornings now.

Finally a Use for Wrapping Paper Scraps

Matt and I really like to travel. In fact, I think we once calculated that Jackson had been on 14 trips comprised of over forty separate flights in his first two years of life. To make matters worse, the trip we make most often (to see my parents) involves two flights (one of them is five to six hours) and a two hour car ride. Let me tell you how much fun it is to travel 12 hours straight with a toddler.

Anyway, to keep him happy on long trips, I keep my eyes peeled for bargain "junk" that I can give to him along the way to amuse him. The key is to always be looking throughout the year so you can pick up the real bargains. I try to find little figures, vehicles, books, and non-messy art projects in the clearance section at places like Target or Wal-Mart or Kohl's and then I just store them away for our next trip. To make the junk...I mean awesome new toys... more exciting, we wrap everything loosely in leftover wrapping paper scraps. The cool thing is that it doesn't matter if the paper is Christmas, Hanukkah, or Birthday, and it doesn't even matter if it totally covers the object. In fact, for little ones it's better to wrap loosely so they can open it on their own. For plane trips, I remove all packaging before wrapping to keep the bulk down, but this weekend we are doing a car trip, so I decided to wrap the presents whole because sometimes the packaging itself is cute:
For this trip, Jackson will be getting two presents on the way there, and two on the way back. The presents are: a tiny die cast bus ($.99), two Little Einsteins characters ($1.50), a book about Dora and Diego ($1.50), and a cool coloring book that "colors" with a non-marking crayon ($7.00). So I spent a grand total of $11.00, but the coloring book was the only real splurge, and even that was on clearance.


Our last car trip looked something like this:

Hour one (we usually leave for car trips around nap time): Jackson plays with toys and books, and eats snacks

Hour two (and three, if we're lucky - yeah right): Nap time!

After nap: Pit stop

After pit stop: Bribe Jackson back into car with the promise of a PRESENT! Jackson plays with new toy and eats more snacks

Desperation hits (part 1): Time for PRESENT number 2!

Desperation his (part 2): When times get REALLY desperate, we pull out the DVD player. We try to reserve this for the last hour of the trip - you don't want to bring out the big guns right at the start!

Life in Our House

I thought about calling this post "Psychologists: We're Just like Everyone Else, Just a Little Bit Lamer" but decided that was too negative to put in the table of contents. Anyway, this is a direct transcript of a conversation that took place at our dinner table a couple of nights ago:



Jackson: Quietly eating pizza (you need to know that neither the quiet part nor the eating part is typical behavior for Jackson in order to understand what happened next...)



Matt: "Wow Jackson! I really like the way you are sitting quietly and eating your pizza! Great job!"



Me (without a trace of irony): "Wow Matt! That was great labeling of praise!"



Both: Wince....awkward silence while we ponder the total and complete lameness of this reinforcement of reinforcement...

My First Picture Schedule

Ok, so I'm not exactly an infant/toddler psychologist, so outside of applying basic behavioral principles to parenting, I haven't really gotten a chance to apply what I learned in graduate school to parenting....until now. Our morning dressing routine had slowly disintegrated to the point where it was taking excruciatingly long and was accompanied by almost continuous banshee-like screaming. So I grabbed the bull by the horns and made Jackson his first Picture Schedule. This is an intervention typically used with kids that are very visual and very concrete. Does this sound like anyone we know? Jackson has a picture schedule of tasks he needs to complete in the morning, and when he finds the picture of Dora at the end, he earns a SPECIAL SURPRISE (a gummy worm). At least, this is the idea.

I was all excited the first morning we tried the picture schedule because I wanted to show Matt what a talented psychologist I am. Unfortunately, our first morning with the picture schedule was pretty much a disaster since he was so preoccupied with his SPECIAL SURPRISE that he couldn't really do much else (you'd think I might have learned from Potty Training: Day 1, but no).


But I haven't given up hope! Since we started this intervention, our time to complete these tasks has steadily dropped from "excruciatingly long" to only ridiculously long and the amount of screaming has dropped from "banshee-like screaming" to only occasional shrieks of protest. It's progress, right?

Toddler Time

Sometimes it seems like I spend all day hurrying Jackson along by cajoling, threatening, and bribing. Our most overused trick is to threaten to "help" him if he doesn't get a move on. For example,

"Jackson get your pants on before I count to three or I'm going to help you."

Toddlers really really really don't like help. It occurred to me that the poor kid never gets a break. I mean, even an event that's supposed to be fun like going to the beach involves thirty minutes of heavy prompting to get dressed, get downstairs, eat breakfast, put on sunscreen, get in the car, etc. So today I decided that maybe instead of trying to get him to do things on MY time, I should try to slow down and live on Toddler Time for a while...

2:01 Jackson wakes up from his nap. We sit in his chair and read Amazing Airplanes three times. I don't actually have to read it at this point because I have it memorized. It's a long story. I'm fairly certain this is going to impress someone, someday.

2:16 I suggest that we go to the grocery store. This is usually a very exciting opportunity for Jackson because our grocery store gives away free cookies and balloons, and has these horrible car shaped carts for the kids to ride in. Jackson gets very excited and shouts GROCERY STORE! I tell him that we will need to 1) put his shoes on, 2) go downstairs and 3) get in the car.

2:17 Jackson leaps off my lap to look for his shoes, which he brings in my general direction. On his way back he finds a gummy ring that used to light up. He drops his shoes and works intently on getting the ring on. I sit back in his chair and stare blankly out the window, trying to enjoy Toddler Time.

2:25 A scream of rage interrupts my thoughts. Jackson has found his shoes again and is trying to put them on himself. Any attempts at helping are met with an angry "Jackson do it!"

2:27 Shoes are on the floor, and Jackson is now happily playing with his yellow school bus.

2:35 Jackson brings his shoes to me and demands "Mommy do it shoes on grocery store cookie." I first try to decide if this counts as an eight word sentence (I'm pretty sure it doesn't), and then I oblige and try not to notice that it's now been 20 minutes since I suggested going to the store.

2:38 We head downstairs. At the bottom of the stairs Jackson exclaims, "TRACTOR!" in a voice reserved for long lost friends that you run into unexpectedly at Starbucks. The tractor is sitting where he has left it after playing with it before his nap. I try to use deep breathing to decrease my blood pressure and then decide to clean the kitchen while he plays with the tractor. This IS Toddler Time after all.

3:06 My kitchen is sparkling clean and Jackson is still playing with the tractor. I finally ask gently, "Jackson, honey, did you want to go to the grocery store with Mommy?" He jumps up and runs for the door yelling, "Push button!" (AKA 'open the garage door'). As soon as he pushes the button, he squirms out of my arms and makes a beeline....straight out of the garage and into the driveway where he runs around in circles whooping like a teenager at a concert. I think, "Oh my god, it's like this kid has no frontal lobe!" And that's when it hits me. He. Literally. Has. No. Frontal. Lobe. Or at least the one he has isn't working yet AT ALL. I'M supposed to be his frontal lobe. I'M the one that is supposed to keep him on track (insert cheesy trumpet song)!

3:08 "Jackson," I say firmly, "you have ten seconds to get in your car seat or Mommy is going to help you." He runs happily to the car and chants with me, "One...Two...Three..."